Habitual sleep duration exhibits great disparity among individuals. While the average sleep duration in the adult population is about 7.5 h, a standard deviation of about 1 h has been reported. It has long been hypothesized that an individual's habitual sleep duration has a physiological basis. However, differences between long sleepers and short sleepers in a sleep regulatory system have never been identified. We sought to determine whether individual differences in sleep duration are associated with systematic differences in the duration of the 'biological night' that is programmed by the circadian pacemaker and is reflected in the nocturnal interval of circadian rhythms in neuroendocrine function, body temperature and arousal. Ten young healthy long sleepers (sleep duration greater than 9 h) and 14 short sleepers (less than 6 h) were studied under constant environmental conditions and in the absence of sleep. The nocturnal intervals of high plasma melatonin levels, increasing cortisol levels, low body temperature, and increasing sleepiness were longer in long sleepers than in short sleepers. The maxima in cortisol and sleepiness exhibited a close relationship to habitual wake-up time which occurred about 2.5 h later in long sleepers than in short sleepers. It is concluded that the circadian pacemaker programs a longer biological night in long sleepers than in short sleepers. We propose that individual differences in the circadian pacemaker's program may contribute to the variability of sleep duration in the general population. The persistence or inertia of an individual's circadian program, as was evident in constant conditions, may underlie the commonly experienced difficulty of changing habitual sleep duration willfully.